Though the Southeastern Manitoba Festival is still nearly a month away, it is crunch-time for performers across the region who are practicing their various musical disciplines.

Festival President Sharon Guenther describes the event as an opportunity for amateur musicians, actors, dancers, and speech performers to publicly showcase their talents while receiving quality adjudication that can help them refine their art.

While students are busy preparing for this wide range of events, Guenther says the event’s planning itself is nearly complete.

“We’ve been able to organize things well this year, we have some amazing adjudicators, everything is on schedule at this point so we’re really excited about that.”

As usual, a variety of accomplished adjudicators will be taking part in the programming. Guenther cites University of Manitoba Professor of Violin Oleg Pokhanovski, and well-known vocal instructor Millie Hildebrand, as two of the instructors who will be leading workshops and assessing performances. 

Guenther says she is also encouraged by the increasing level of interest the community seems to be taking in developing young performers.

“We’re finding that more people want to be involved in the festival, which is wonderful.”

Guenther indicates that several local churches have opened their doors to host events for the first time ever. Because of this, the 22-day long festival will have its events spread over many different venues during many different times.

A complete schedule of the performances and venues will be released on the Southeastern Manitoba Festival website on February 1st, meanwhile, the first official event is taking place on February 18th.